"Vacation Friends" Review: A Familiar Sense of Drugs and Heart

Platform: Hulu

Release Date: August 27, 2021

It is movies like this, a simple, raunchy comedy, that can really capture the tumultous nature of the movie industry. It makes sense for $200+ million blockbusters to run into bumps in the road and take time to polish a final product with such large financial expectations. But even attempting to bring this lower budget comedy to the silver screen was at least a seven year journey, with Chris Pratt and Anna Faris originally tied to the Steve Pink directed movie in 2014. The following year, Ice Cube was set to replace Pratt following his and Faris' exit, which would remain unchanged until 2019's announcement that John Cena, Lil Rey Howery (replacing Ice Cube), and Meredith Hagner were set to star. The director also saw a change at this time as Steve Pink was replaced by Clay Tarver and was followed in 2020 with the rounding out of the main cast with Yvonne Orji joining.

Having planned a week-long, romantic vacation to Mexico with his girlfriend, Emily (Yvonne Orji), Marcus (Lil Rey Howery) quickly finds his plans of a proposal falling apart. Following a less than ideal dropping to his knee, the couple meets Ron (John Cena) and Kyla (Meredith Hagner), who are complete opposites of Marcus and Emily, leading an impulsive and risky life full of an excitement around which Marcus has difficulty wrapping his head. After the drugs and alcohol wear off from spending their vacation with this unorthodox couple, Marcus and Emily are happy to put this time in Mexico behind them and start planning their wedding. Now months later, a celebration the night before their wedding seemingly turns into a disaster when Ron and Kyla crash the party, literally. Trying to balance the posh nature of their families with the erratic nature of their surprising guests wavers between heightened anxiety and oddly beneficial, but the concern that a Mexico repeat will result in utter disaster looms over their heads.

If this movie sounds familiar to you in any way, then you have seen this movie. The most disappointing aspect of the film is that nothing is original and it follows the same structure of most of these comedy films: craziness ensues until the main characters feel like they have a handle on it, then something happens that pushes them over the edge, finally leading to the emotional redemption. Even being a color-by-numbers comedy, the movie is able to garner a few good laughs, mostly because of the cast's elevation of the material. The drug-related shenanigans were very goofy and had a cartoon feel to them, but they did provide some of the best highlights. The shrooms in the forest ordeal was one of the movie's best, with Marcus and Ron tripping out while on a regal fox hunt with Emily's family.

This movie continued to reinforce the proof that John Cena is a terrible actor, but can come off much better when he has the right co-star to play off of. Even being a comedy where over-acting can be an acceptable style, Cena goes way over the top, acting more like an unmedicated child with ADHD at a Chuck 'E Cheese than an overzealous adult. Also, he kept using this odd, over-extended body language that made sure he was highly flexed when delivering his lines. Luckily, Lil Rey Howery kept his performance a bit more grounded, relying more on his facial expressions and body language to deliver more humor than his dialogue alone. It is clear, though, that he is just a discount Kevin Hart, making this movie a knock-off Rock/Kevin Hart buddy film. I did not feel like Yvonne Orji had enough of a presence to bring anything great to her role as Emily, but she did not detract from it as well. Meredith Hagner, on the other hand, I found to bring quite a charming and oblivious character to the screen. Kyla becomes a bit of a scene stealer in the latter half of the movie and is the ultimate "all heart, no brain" wholesome personality the movie needed.

She is where any level of sentimentality began and ended with this film. The comedy was weclomed, but at some point, there needs to be some added emotional shifts to keep the feelings fresh and highlight the humor better. However, the movie is written to incorporate a rushed redemption moment in the final piece of the third act and is given no time to make itself felt, being left with a quick resolution and little time to matter. There was also plenty of times that the comedy is delivered in a rushed manner and, although that type of shock-humor may be appealing to some, it resulted in a few deadpan periods. Like the Waffle House Ron and Kyla visit, you will get exactly what you expect out of this movie. It is nothing to write home about and it is consistently substandard, but it can make a decent weeknight watch.

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RATING: ⛵ ⛵ ⛵ / 5

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